The Visitation Part 45

Brett was getting close.

"You'd better go," Kyle told me.

I knew Kyle was sacrificing himself. I gave him a nod of thanks and eased forward through the gathering bodies.

"Travis! Don't you leave!" Brett warned, pointing his night stick at me.

I hollered out my window, "Just meet me at the clinic!" and kept going.

In my mirror I saw a four-way spat going between Brett Henchle, Kyle, the christ, and his long-lost mother. Then Rod joined up and they had a five-way going. Antioch was definitely an exciting place to visit.

I reached the clinic in two minutes. Charlie and Meg Fordyce were already there and took Sally inside. They'd gotten the word around. Morgan Elliott was also there, along with Jim Baylor, Joe and Emily Kelmer, and Bruce Hiddle. They all saw Sally's condition before her parents hurried her through the door, and now they gathered around me.

"Don't worry about a thing, Travis," said Joe.

Morgan put one arm around me, gave me a quick hug, and let go.

"We'll see whose side old Henchle's on," said Jim.

Brett Henchle screeched to a halt right beside my car and almost fell out, he was so upset. "Travis-" Then he regarded the others standing around me and balked a little. "Now folks, I wouldn't recommend getting involved in this."

"Come into the clinic and have a look at Sally," I said.

"First I'm taking you in!"

"No you're not," said Joe. "He was transporting an injury victim. It was an emergency."

"I'll be the judge of that!"

Rod Stanton drove into the parking lot of the clinic with Kyle sitting in the back of his squad car.

Brett nodded toward his backup and said, "It's over, folks. Now unless you all want to be arrested, you'll stand aside and let me do my duty."

"I think you'd better take a look at Sally and do your duty!" Jim demanded.

"Let's do it," said Rod.

Brett jerked his head around and glared at his deputy. "I'm giving the orders here, deputy!" Then he noticed Kyle wasn't handcuffed. "Where are his cuffs?"

"He's not under arrest." It wasn't just a statement of fact. It was an act of defiance, and I could tell Rod knew it. "He hasn't done anything wrong, and besides that, he helped me quell that second Jesus situation."

"n.o.body's getting arrested here today," said Joe.

"Unless it's Mr. Brandon, the home wrecker and lover beater!" said Jim, jabbing his finger toward the ranch.

"Brett," I said, "I'm hoping your loyalty is still to the law and to this community. If so, I'm sure you can understand my not stopping-"

"You resisted an officer, Travis! You resisted an officer, fled an officer, disobeyed an officer, acted like a jerk, made an officer look like a jerk . . ."

"Don't give us that *officer' business!" said Kyle. "You're not an officer of the law-you're an officer for Brandon Nichols and you know it!"

Brett turned deliberately and put his hand on his gun. "You want to say that again?"

Bruce interceded. "Officer, I think Kyle is asking you to clarify where your loyalties lie: with the law, and justice, and the good of this community, or with Brandon Nichols. Just who's calling the shots here?"

Brett just stood there, stuck.

Rod tapped Brett's arm with the back of his fingers. "C'mon. Let's talk to Sally and take it from there."

For an agonizing moment, the only sound was Brett's labored, angry breathing.

Finally, abruptly, Brett started toward the door of the clinic, but not without barking a few "last word" orders. "I want this parking lot cleared! If you've no business here, then clear out! Now!"

I tagged Kyle and Morgan. "Let's get to a phone."

I HELD THE RECEIVER to my ear and dialed the number I got from information. "Come on, now, time's getting tight."

I was sitting in Morgan's office at the Methodist church. Morgan and Kyle were sitting in the church office behind the foyer, listening in on a speakerphone, its microphone muted. We all listened as the telephone rang at the other end once, twice, three times, four times- "h.e.l.lo?" The voice sounded grumpy, gravelly, and a little slurred.

"h.e.l.lo, is this the Cantwell residence?"

"Yeah, who's this?" The man could have been drunk. It was hard to understand him.

"h.e.l.lo, I'm Travis Jordan. I live in Antioch, Washington. I suppose you've read about us in the papers-"

"No."

"Oh. Well, I'm calling to speak to Lois Cantwell."

"She's not home right now." This guy could never get a job telephone soliciting, that was for sure. He could get a job discouraging solicitors.

"Well then, is this Reverend Ernest Cantwell?"

"Yeah, who's this?"

I told him who I was again. "I think we might have a mutual acquaintance. Would you by any chance have a son named Justin?"

There was silence at the other end, but I could hear a labored breathing.

"Are you there?"

"I don't have a son named Justin, no."

"Any relation at all named Justin?"

"No."

"Do you have a son?"

"No!" The tone of his voice told me otherwise.

"Well . . . I happen to know a Justin Cantwell who hails from Nechville, Texas, and has a mother named Lois."

"I don't know any Lois, either."

Oh? "Uh, excuse me, sir, but you just told me Lois wasn't home right now. I'm calling a number listed under both your names, Ernest and Lois Cantwell."

"Don't call this number again!"

Click.

I hung up and sat back to wait for Kyle and Morgan to journey through the church sanctuary and join me. As they entered the office, I looked up at them for their reaction.

Morgan shrugged a little. "I guess I'm not surprised."

Kyle patted his pockets symbolically. "Anybody got change for airfare?"

"I could sell my mother's old watch," Morgan quipped.

"GILDY!"

The scream rattled the house and made Gildy Holliday jump in her seat. She was already nervous and frightened. She'd been working at the quaint desk just off the kitchen, writing checks to pay the help and compiling a grocery list, when she heard the crashes, tinkles, and rips coming from the guest room. That was Nichols's room now. He'd decided the main house was more to his liking than the guest cottage, the big kitchen more practical for his parties, the larger, more elegant guest bedroom more conducive to his romantic flings.

But the arrangement also put him under the same roof as Gildy with no walls or bars between them. She didn't answer him, but clicked off her computer, threw the corporate checkbook into a drawer, and grabbed her coat. It was time to get out of there.

Brandon Nichols was moving through the house like a man possessed, his footsteps quick and pounding, his breath chugging. She headed for the back door- He was there, his eyes like those of a stalking panther, his hair dangling like black lightning bolts across his brow. He moved toward her.

She ran behind her desk to keep it between them.

"Call Brett Henchle!" The voice was low and sinister. "My room's been vandalized!"

She picked up the telephone receiver on her desk but hesitated to dial, staring at him.

His eyes were darting about the room as if watching a swarm of tiny, invisible demons. "Torn up! Broken! Everything a disaster, a disaster!" He noticed she hadn't dialed. "Well, call them! Somebody's been here! It's a senseless, despicable act of hatred! We have enemies, Gildy! They're trying to destroy us!" He stopped in the middle of the room, wiping drool from his mouth with the back of his hand. "Trying to destroy us. Hate. It's everywhere, all around. Notify the staff! We're going to heighten security tonight! No one comes or goes. We're locking the place down."

"I'll tell them," she said weakly, still holding the receiver but not calling.

Now he seemed dazed by his own anger, scanning the room, slowly turning as if searching. "That bedroom is swimming with evil. It's crawling. It's alive. I can't sleep there anymore."

"You can sleep in the third bedroom. No one's using that room right now."

He nodded, his eyes still crazy. "Good. Don't call the cops." She put the telephone down. "They don't need to know. n.o.body needs to know. n.o.body." He moved toward the hall as she stood behind her desk watching his every move. "You can't trust them anyway. You can't trust cops. They stand by and let horrible things happen to you, did you know that? They stand by . . . just stand by . . ."

"I need to check on Mrs. Macon."

He nodded. "Go ahead. Go." Then he laughed, apparently at himself. "Don't mind me. I'm just a child of the devil."

He headed down the hall to his room and closed the door behind him. She heard him roar like a madman. There was another crash. A piece of furniture hit the door. The house quivered. A window broke.

Gildy b.u.t.toned up her coat, went straight to Mrs. Macon's room, knocked lightly, then went in. In a matter of minutes, she emerged again, carrying Mrs. Macon, now wearing a robe and wrapped in a blanket. The widow's eyes were open, but she seemed oblivious to the fact that she was being carried hurriedly down the hall and through the kitchen. Gildy went out the back door, put the widow in her car, and drove away.

KYLE, MORGAN, AND I put our heads together, pooled our bank accounts, and called the travel agent. She could get me into Dallas/Fort Worth where I could rent a car to drive to Nechville, and fit it into our waning budget if I flew out of Spokane that night and out of Seattle at one in the morning. I had to brace myself before agreeing, and then it was settled. Kyle left for home. I remained with Morgan in her office.

"What is it?" she asked.

After months of playing Justin Cantwell's strange game, things were becoming clear. "I know what I'm going to find in Nechville."

She nodded.

"You know what Marian said when we found out she had lung cancer?" I was still sitting at Morgan's desk. She sat down across from me and listened as she always did. "I didn't know what to say. I didn't know what to tell her or what to do, and she just said, *Travis, take me ice-skating.'" The vision flashed across my mind: We were kids in our twenties, I had my arm around her waist and her hand in mine, and the world was rushing by us-we were in our forties, on the ice again, and she was giving me that one, special look.

A wave of emotion hit me and I could hardly speak my confession. "I could barely remember how. It'd been so long. . . ."

Morgan heaved a troubled sigh. "I should have gone fishing with Gabe. He asked me so many times, but always ended up going with his buddies. I had to stay here, studying, fulfilling some counseling appointments I could have scheduled for another time. Hey, it was ministry. I was doing it for G.o.d. And now I've never been able to understand why I never got it through my head: I was his first choice for a fishing buddy. His first choice, and I never went!"

I found a smile somewhere, pa.s.sed it on to her, and wiped the corners of my eyes. "I think Marian and I enjoyed ministering together. We lived it, we talked about it, we spent our days and nights immersed in it. But now I'm afraid . . ."

"Mm-hm."

"I'm afraid that, that maybe it was the ministry that defined us, that somehow it was church that summarized what we were. We were the program, the preaching, the Sunday school, the youth choir, the bus, the building, but were we ever us? When Marian died, it hit me so hard and so cruel: all the church stuff was still there-the service schedule, the song sheets, the visitation committee, it was all still there. But Marian was gone. The church stuff would always be there in one form or another, always needing, always demanding-but there was only one Marian, only one chance to know her, and that was over.

"You know, we prayed around the clock for Marian's healing. The whole church fasted and we had people a.s.signed to twenty-four one-hour shifts. Dee and her friends tried to speak a healing into existence. I got a note from somebody who said they had a dream: If I'd dip Marian seven times in the baptistry she'd be healed." My little laugh was sad. "I almost tried that.

"I took her to some faith healing meetings. You know the kind: You go in there and some loud, flamboyant evangelist with big hair starts laying hands on people and they start falling over while the organ player runs his finger down the keyboard. It was strange, I guess, kind of hokey. But when you're grasping . . .

"I believe G.o.d could have healed Marian. I still believe the Lord heals-I mean, look at Joe Kelmer. Bang! Healed, just like that.

"But can you figure G.o.d out? All the things we tried, all the faith and the methods . . . and the shadows on her x-rays just kept getting bigger, kept spreading. They took out her left lung and the shadow spread to her right, and then the cancer started popping up other places.

"I think she knew-I mean, clear back when she wanted to go ice-skating again. She always had a special intimacy with G.o.d, an inside line or something. I think she knew. But she stuck by me: She hoped right along with me, and we fought together against the whole idea of her dying, and we both tried to faith our way out of it. But we, uh, we finally got a clue-or I got a clue. G.o.d has his ways. He just plain has his ways. By the time she died it was almost a nonevent, we were so ready for it.

"She was holding my hand, and I could feel the moment she slipped away. It was June 12, 1997, just five months after we saw those first x-rays." I drew a deep breath and sighed it out, bringing my recollections to a close. "G.o.d will do what G.o.d will do."

Morgan studied me a moment, then asked, "Do you still trust him?"

I had no trouble nodding yes.

"Then you're one up on Justin Cantwell."

That came as a revelation, and it made me chuckle. "When did that happen?"

She had a playful delight in her eyes. "Sometime after Justin got here. As you said, G.o.d has his ways. Maybe it took a bitter man not having to show you what you did have-and to show me." She reached across the desk and took my hand as tears filled her eyes. "Jesus was hiding, that's all. Hiding in the memories-all the places you've been, all the people you've known, all the paths he's walked with you, whether you understood it all or not." She paused to reflect, then told me, "What Justin Cantwell wouldn't give for just one good memory."

I PACKED A SMALL BAG with enough clothes and necessities for an overnight in Texas, and drove to Spokane to catch an eleven o'clock flight to Seattle. The flight from Seattle to Dallas/Fort Worth would arrive around six-thirty in the morning, Dallas time. The drive to Nechville would take about three hours, which meant I'd be arriving in that little town just in time for Sunday morning services. Needless to say, I wouldn't be sleeping much.

ARMOND HARRISON finally left Anderson's Furniture and Appliance after bickering over the price of a television and whether or not the stand should be included or be extra. Now Don Anderson was alone in his big glittery store, surrounded by washers, dryers, televisions, CD players, VCRs, DVD players, all shapes and sizes of radios, telephones, toys, CDs, ca.s.settes . . .

And he had to get a handle on his new ability. He had to control it, channel it, rein it in, and use it in some orderly, controlled fashion. If he didn't . . .